Akur (Restitution #3)

Akur

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Akur

They walked in silence, him in front and the female who had just made him feel more than he ever had in sols behind. He tried not to glance over his shoulder at her too much, tried not to let his mind wander back to the way her hands had moved over him, sure and gentle despite her fear. But it wasn’t just the physical release that haunted him—it was the look in her eyes. The way she’d touched him without revulsion. The way she’d whispered his name like it meant something.

His shoulder still ached, and his body temperature remained higher than normal, but the maddening edge of the heat had dulled to something manageable. Something he could think through. And think he did—too qrakking much. About how she’d known exactly what he needed. About how she’d seen him at his weakest and instead of running, she’d drawn closer.

Clenching his jaw, he forced his attention back to their surroundings. He was a warrior, trained to protect, to fight, to kill if necessary. He wasn’t supposed to feel this…vulnerability. He’d thought Ajos a fool to have let something like feelings mar his objectives. But this…whatever w as happening was more than a growing need to protect the female at his back. He wanted to understand her. To know what made her smile despite their desperate circumstances, what gave her the strength to keep going when most would have broken.

It was strength like that which had kept him going at the darkest times. But she was no warrior. She didn’t live for bloodshed and death. So…how…

The sound of her footsteps behind him was oddly comforting—steady, determined, trusting him to lead them to safety. That trust was a weight heavier than any battle armor he’d ever worn. Heavier still was the knowledge that he’d die before betraying it.

A particularly loud crunch of gravel under her feet made him glance back again, catching her eyes in the dim light. She offered him a small smile, and something in his chest constricted painfully. In that moment, he realized with stark clarity that his growing feelings for her had nothing to do with what had just happened between them. It wasn’t about the heat, or physical release, or even gratitude. It was about her courage, her compassion, her fierce determination to survive without losing her humanity in the process.

His thoughts were so loud he almost didn’t notice the moment his senses peaked. The moment he subconsciously stopped short, causing her to step into his back.

“Akur?” There was a note of uncertainty there, as if she expected to look around him and come face to face with another monster. But it wasn’t a creature before them. It was something else.

Pods. Hundreds of them. Each one large enough to hold a being, their surfaces clouded with frost. Some were empty, their doors hanging open like dark, gaping pits. Others…

He heard Constance’s sharp intake of breath the moment she looked around him.

“Are those…” She couldn’t finish the question.

“Stasis chambers.” Akur’s growl echoed in the vast space. “This is…a storage facility.”

Constance took a shaky step forward, drawn despite herself to the neares t occupied pod. She froze as she brushed the frost away to reveal a face.

The twisted remains of what had once been a Frenshuri. A female, from the looks of it. Akur growled, despite himself. His vision picked out details he wished he couldn’t see—the surgical precision of the cuts, the missing organs, the look of terror forever frozen on the being’s face. He’d seen this before, but never on this scale.

“They’re all…dead?” Constance whispered beside him, and the horror in her voice made his protective instincts surge. “How long do you think they’ve been here?”

“Many many orbits.” He moved closer to her, fighting the urge to shield her from the grotesque display with his own body. “That is a Frenshuri. Their world fell a long time ago. Long before mine.” The cold emanating from the pods made his skin prickle, and he saw the moment Kon-stahns wrapped her arms around herself. He wanted to replace her arms with his. To pull her into him. Shield her from this sight and the cold. Shield her from everything. Qef. But he couldn’t. She was a pretty little human, and he was a grotesque thing that fed on bloodshed and horror. She was only helping him because there was no other choice. She couldn’t…didn’t…a sweet soft thing like her couldn’t want something like him.

“ They did this. Experimented on these creatures…” She moved to another pod, brushing away the frost to reveal yet another being that was not a Frenshuri. This one he didn’t even know, but it was in the same state. Still cut, still operated on, still dead in horror.

“The Tasqals take what they want from their victims, then store the remains. For study. For spare parts.” The words came out as a growl, memories of his own people’s suffering rising like bile in his throat. “All these females must have birthed Tasqal young.”

Being in this room brought it all back—the screams that echoed across worlds where he’d fought against the Tasqals. The sickening efficiency with which they’d collected their “specimens.” The way they’d sorted through the females, young ones and elders, like traders selecting produce.

And how he’d once been too young, too powerless to stop them .

Well, he wasn’t a youngling anymore.

When she shifted to another pod, wiping away the frost with such reverence, such respect for the poor being lying dead in that tomb, something ached in his chest.

Standing in this massive crypt, the clarity of what would happen to Kon-stahns if he let the Tasqals win was crushing. The thought made his blood boil, made the lingering heat in his system spike dangerously. He wouldn’t let them take her. He really would die first.

He watched her move from pod to pod, her small hand clearing away frost with the same gentleness he’d noticed before. But beneath that tenderness, he could see anger building in the rigid line of her spine, in the way her fingers curled into fists between each pod she examined.

“All these beings,” she said, and he stood straighter. In all their time together, he’d never heard her voice so low. So dangerous. “All these lives. Mothers, daughters, sisters…” She turned to him, and the fury in her eyes matched the inferno in his blood. “The Tasqals didn’t just kill them. They used them. Violated them.”

He watched her, cataloging everything. “Yes,” he said. “Many species have suffered from their menace. Many worlds have fallen. Many civilizations ruined. Even those that fought back and won.”

Kon-stahns turned. “Won? Some people won?”

Qrak, why was he about to tell her this? He didn’t talk about this. He had to pause. “When the Tasqals came to Tonvuhiri, they couldn’t take us down. So they tried to weaken us. Barred the trade routes. Left us to starve…and the fear spread like a disease.”

Constance stepped forward, her hand finding his arm. The touch anchored him, pulled him back from the edge of old nightmares. “But you survived,” she whispered. “You grew stronger. And now you’re fighting back.”

He looked down at her hand on his arm, so small against his scorching skin, yet containing more strength than she knew. “We all fight back,” he rumbled. “Or they will never stop.”

She pulled away, but not before giving his arm a squeeze that sent warmth through his chest. Moving to the center of the chamber, she survey ed the pods with new purpose. Her shoulders squared, chin lifting in that way he’d come to recognize—the calm before her storm.

A slow smile stretched his lips, even before she turned to face him.

“You know what?” Despite everything, despite the horror and death surrounding them, his lips curved into that smile too. “I think it’s time these bastards learned what happens when you piss off the wrong people.”

The look in her eyes, the steel in her voice—it stirred something in him. Not the heat-madness from before, but something deeper. Something that made him want to follow her into whatever hell she planned to raise.

“Come on, Mint Man,” she said, her smile growing wider. There was hope yet. There was always hope. “Let’s go cause some chaos.”